A Candle In The Darkness
by LadyFern
Summary: Three years have dragged by since Christine left and Erik has nothing to live for...until a small angelic child pays him a visit and proves he still has a heart. One shot.


He stared into the dancing flames. Even fire could find enough joy to warrant dancing amidst this sordid world. Erik slouched in his massive armchair, his thin, long fingers draped over the intricately carved armrests. Three years had passed since Christine chose that...insolent, stuck up, French aristocratic fool...three years of staying locked away below the Opera House. Three years of no daylight, no human faces, he hadn't even moved more than ten feet from his armchair. Not a single note had emanated from the keys on his organ in three, long, silent years. A small clatter pulled him from his thoughts but he made no move.

Shuffling pitter patter of tiny footsteps echoed behind him. Now, it came. The insanity. Hearing things that weren't there, inventing faces that leered from the shadows, chubby, angelic faces...

He blinked. Two large blue eyes peered at him from across the room. A rosy cheeked child with a halo of blond ringlets toddled forward, chattering a string of incoherent words.

Erik studied the child solemnly. What a thing to behold, this little perfect human. His mother would have loved this child, this angel. Even clothed in a pure white, poofy dress that seemed to be ever the craze for mothers to dress their young girls in. He turned away in disgust.

"Mama?" the child cooed. No concern, no fear, only wonder. The child squealed with delight at the sight of an adult and took a wobbly step forward only to trip and sprawl on her face. She let out a blood curdling cry and Erik hunched his shoulders, tense.

"Good God, what a hideous sound." He whipped around in his chair to reprimand the child but the words melted away in his throat. Her round face scrunched up in pain and turned beet red, tears coursed down her chubby cheeks and she stretched out her tiny hands in plea for comfort.

Erik turned away.

The screams grew louder and more piteous, more heart wrenchingly painful to the ears. How could such a small creature make such a tremendous noise?

In one long stride, Erik crossed the room and reached the child, scooping her up and wiping away her tears. Her screams ebbed to small sobs that racked her body. He began singing, low and soft, more like a humming that merged into a few lyrics as the child's distress began to ease and she stared at him in wonder with big wet pools for blue eyes.

_"Think of me, think of me waking,_

_silent and resigned._

_Imagine me, trying too hard_

_to put you from my mind."_

He broke off as his throat grew tight. That song had been rattling around in his head since the day she sang it.

The child reached up and gripped his cheek with surprisingly strong fingers and before he could stop her, let go of the skin with a resounding slap. He roared in pain and the child's eyes grew wide as moons, her tiny mouth began to tremble and he immediately regretted his outburst. The child studied him a moment and he stared back then she erupted in a fit of infectious giggles.

Erik caught himself smiling. A sudden thought brought his joy crashing to a halt. This child must be returned to her parents, they must be sick with worry over her.

"Who do you belong to my little angel?" He asked of the child. "Your parents must be terrible beings to let you out of their sight long enough to find an old monster like me. They will take you away if they..."

His heart seized within him. They would take her away once they knew who he was, once they knew that he had held her, touched her. The child toyed with his lapel, passing it back and forth between two fingers, then leaned over and promptly demanded to be let down. He watched as she toddled around the room, ever wary of how close she came to the burning candles. She soon crawled onto the organ bench and discovered the keys; she plinked at one experimentally, startled at the deep sound that emanated through the room. She poked another key, then another, giggling and taking great delight at the range of sounds she had suddenly found.

If they hadn't noticed by now that the child was gone, they would never notice, Erik reasoned. He could raise her, tend her, care for her, clothe and feed her just as well, no far better! than those fiends up above. She already showed great promise in music and she exhibited no fear around him...

Yes, that was it. She was different. She couldn't possibly go back to those horrendous fools that lived out there in the world, she was too good for them. She should stay here, with him, and be the joy, the love that he so longed for.

The child wriggled onto her stomach and slipped off the bench, her eyes barely open as she wobbled over to where Erik sat in his armchair, and patted his knee, gazing up at him, imploringly.

"Up," she demanded.

Without hesitation, he swung the child up and onto his lap where she instantly snuggled against his neck and her breathing evened out to gentle snores. He squeezed his eyes shut tight and pressed his lips together, fighting tears that threatened to spill over.

[][][]

Erik blinked awake and immediately sensed something was wrong. The child. Where was the child? He shot from his chair, frantic, searching here, then there, the organ, his chair, she was nowhere in sight. His pulse raced and his mind fogged with panic. Why couldn't he think clearly? Where would a small child go?

Anywhere, he realized with a sick knot in his gut. He jogged to the river, checked the boat but there was nothing. Had he really been hallucinating? Had she been real or only a figment of his imagination after all? Was he really going mad down here alone?

He stopped dead in his tracks. A song, gentle, soft, the words fusing together, floated through the air. That voice. Christine's? No. Never would it be Christine's.

He followed the sound, so pure, so delicate, like a silken garment to the skin, soothing, calming. A shriek of delight broke the trance and the child wandered to meet him, a charcoal pencil in one hand, black smudges all over her face, arms and fingers. He picked up the child, paying no mind to the mess of charcoal that stained his Parisian crafted shirt, only aware of the flood of relief that swamped his tense muscles. He would have never forgiven himself if she had been drowned or hurt. She offered him the pencil and cooed.

"Where's your masterpiece, little artiste?" he queried. She pointed a grimy finger. In one corner of his music room, she had scribbled and doodled black, strange figures, stars, flowers and all manner of bizarre looking things only identifiable by the artist. Erik only saw the beauty in the free movements of the lines and the love written on his walls.

"Mon cherie, 'tis beautiful work you do," he said with a smile. The child smiled back then, before he could even realize her intentions, ripped off his mask. He gasped and reached for it but the child laughed and put it over her own face, peering through the holes with one eye. She patted his cheek and traced his worn features with one finger, loving especially to tug playfully at his hair, now grown nearly to his shoulders.

He stared at her in wonder. The child was fearless. Could she not see he was a monster? Could she not see how deformed and hideous he looked?

She dropped the mask to the ground and laid her head on his shoulder. He made no move to retrieve the mask, knowing she didn't care and that was all that mattered to him.

[][][]

A scream ripped through his dreams and he sat bolt upright. The child murmered in her sleep tucked into his arms but didn't stir. Something felt very wrong. Gently, he moved the child to the seat, wrapping his cloak about her then vanished down the labyrinthine tunnels of the Opera House, emerging on the catwalk above the stage where Christine first sang and gripped his heart.

A woman ran up and down the aisles, frantic, deranged.

"Where is my child! Someone took my child! Please help me, she's gone! Someone find her please!"

Erik watched, silent. She seemed to be a madwoman. The child couldn't possibly go back to her, she wouldn't care for her properly. No, the child was better off with him. He turned to go but the woman's screams rang in his ears as he receded back to his lair. The child popped her head up as he entered, grinning, and wiggled off the chair, tumbling to the floor, then wobbling to her feet and gripping him about the ankle with her characteristic strength.

"Dah!" she said, gazing up at him, a bundle of pure happiness.

Something seemed to snap inside him. Of course the woman was mad, anyone would go mad if they lost this little one, this little angel. She couldn't stay locked away in the cold and darkness for the rest of her life, she had done nothing to deserve it. She had to be a light to the world, to show them how to love again, she would be their teacher, the best of all.

Through his tears, he scribbled a fast note and with gentle, trembling fingers, pinned the paper to the back of the child. He whipped her up onto his shoulders and she squealed in glee as he bounced her along through the tunnels and up to the Opera House. The woman's cries had grown more frantic, and had become a whirling frenzy of panic.

Erik plopped the child to the ground, planting a kiss on her forehead, lingering only a moment to breathe in her soft, sweet scent and sing to her the last words he knew she would ever hear him speak.

_"Think of me, think of me fondly,_

_when we've said good-bye._

_Remember me, once in a while,_

_please promise me you'll try..."_

Tears choked the words off in his throat and he vanished into the shadows to wait.

It only took a moment or two before the child tottered off, following behind her wild mother and nearly running into her. The mother fell to her knees and squeezed the child until she grunted and whined to be released. Erik watched as the mother pried the note off the child's back and read it.

**_"You have a talented child Madame, quite skilled in the arts of music. Find her teachers worthy of her talents and nurture her as you would a delicate rose. You are blessed more than you can ever know. - O.G."_**


End file.
